Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Religions

Islam

is-LAHM
Abrahamic (Monotheistic)

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Origin 610 to 632 CE

Islam holds that God is one and without partner, that he has sent prophets to every people, and that his final revelation is the Quran, delivered to Muhammad in Arabia in the seventh century. Muslims regard Muhammad as the last of a prophetic line running through Abraham, Moses and Jesus, and the Quran as God's own speech rather than a record of it. Practice is defined more by observable obligation than by creed: the declaration of faith, five daily prayers, almsgiving, the fast of Ramadan and the pilgrimage to Mecca, elaborated by centuries of jurisprudence into a law covering worship, commerce and family life. With roughly two billion adherents it is the second largest religion.

History & Origin

Islam traces its origin to the revelations received by the prophet Muhammad in Mecca and Medina in the early seventh century, collected as the Quran.

Facts
Belief
Supreme Being
Allah, God, held to be one and without partner or equal. 2
Theology
Monotheistic: one God 1
Transgression CategorySourced to the subject's own account
Akl mal al-yatim: consuming the wealth of an orphan. 3Tradition: Sunni Islam
Transgression CategorySourced to the subject's own account
Al-tawalli yawm al-zahf: fleeing from the battlefield. 3Tradition: Sunni Islam
Transgression CategorySourced to the subject's own account
Qadhf: slandering chaste, believing women with unchastity. 3Tradition: Sunni Islam
Transgression CategorySourced to the subject's own account
Qatl al-nafs: killing a soul that Allah has forbidden, except by right. 3Tradition: Sunni Islam
Transgression CategorySourced to the subject's own account
Riba: consuming usury or interest. 3Tradition: Sunni Islam
Transgression CategorySourced to the subject's own account
Shirk: associating partners with Allah, the first and gravest of the Seven Destructive Sins (as-sab al-mubiqat). 3Tradition: Sunni Islam
Transgression CategorySourced to the subject's own account
Sihr: magic or sorcery. 3Tradition: Sunni Islam
Position on Usury
Interest of any kind on a loan is forbidden 4
Sourced to the subject's own accountRiba, interest on a loan of any rate, is forbidden outright, not only an excessive or exploitative rate. The prohibition reached its complete and final form in Surah Al-Baqarah 2:275-281, after two earlier and progressively stronger stages, and has not been reversed by mainstream Sunni or Shia jurisprudence since.
Usury Position DetailSourced to the subject's own account
The Quran's treatment of riba came in stages rather than all at once. An early Meccan verse, Surah Al-Rum 30:39, contrasted interest unfavorably with charity as moral guidance, without yet imposing a legal ban. After the migration to Medina the tone sharpened: Surah Al-Nisa 4:161 rebukes an earlier community for taking interest despite being forbidden it, and Surah Al-Imran 3:130, revealed after the Battle of Uhud, specifically condemns compounding interest. The final and complete prohibition, covering interest of any kind, came in Surah Al-Baqarah 2:275-281, revealed near the end of the Prophet's life and describing persistence in the practice as tantamount to war against God and His messenger. This is why contemporary Islamic finance avoids interest bearing loans altogether, structuring transactions instead as profit and loss sharing partnerships or cost-plus sales. 4
Position on Marriage
Marriage may licitly be polygynous 5
Sourced to the subject's own accountQur'an 4:3 permits a man to marry up to four wives at one time, conditioned on his being able to deal justly with each in material terms, spending, clothing and time; 4:129 clarifies that perfect emotional justice between wives is not humanly attainable and so is not the standard. A second condition is financial capability to support each wife.
Marriage Position DetailSourced to the subject's own account
Qur'an 4:3 states: "And if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with the orphan girls then marry (other) women of your choice, two or three, or four." Classical and contemporary Sunni and Shia jurisprudence alike reads this as permitting, not requiring, a man to be married to up to four wives at one time, on two conditions: material justice between the wives, in spending, clothing, and time, which Qur'an 4:129 immediately qualifies by noting that perfect justice in feeling, as opposed to material treatment, is not humanly possible and so is not what is required; and the financial capacity to support each wife. Monogamy remains the ordinary practice for most Muslims worldwide; the ruling recognizes polygynous marriage as licit rather than mandating it. 5
Position on Sexuality
Same-sex orientation or practice is held to bar full membership or participation 6 5
The four classical Sunni schools of law unanimously hold homosexual acts unlawful. The Shafi'i, Hanbali and the main Maliki position treat the act under or analogous to the hadd penalty for zina, a punishable offense under strict evidentiary conditions (four witnesses or confession); the Maliki school's own stricter reading holds both parties liable regardless of marital status; the Hanafi school leans toward a discretionary ta'zir punishment instead, reasoning the hadd evidentiary bar was not met. All four schools distinguish the act from the attraction itself, which is not held to be sinful.
Sexuality Position Detail
Classical Islamic jurisprudence treats homosexual acts, generally termed liwat in the legal literature, as unlawful across all four Sunni schools, though the schools differ on the exact legal category and punishment. The Shafi'i, Hanbali and main Maliki position hold the punishment mirrors that for zina under the hadd category, a fixed penalty applied only under strict evidentiary conditions such as four eyewitnesses or a clear confession; the Maliki school's own harshest reading holds both parties subject to execution regardless of marital status; the Hanafi school instead leans toward a discretionary punishment, ta'zir, set by a judge rather than a fixed hadd penalty, on the reasoning that the specific evidentiary threshold hadd requires was not met by the available textual evidence. Across all four schools, the same-sex attraction itself is treated as distinct from the act and is not, on its own, held to be sinful; the legal rulings address conduct. 6
Origins
Origin Period
610 to 632 CE 1
Place of Origin
The Hijaz, in western Arabia: Mecca and Medina 1
Founder
Muslims hold Islam to be the restoration of the primordial religion rather than a new founding 1
Founder
The Prophet Muhammad (c. 570-632) 1
Form of the Confession
The shahada, the declaration that there is no god but God and Muhammad is His messenger, is Islam's central creed and the first of the five pillars. 2
Status
Status Today
Living tradition, practised today 1
Trajectory
Membership Over Time
By 2020, the same Pew study found the global Muslim population had grown 21 percent to 2.0 billion (26 percent of world population), growing twice as fast as the rest of the world's population over the decade, driven by Muslims having more children and a younger average age than members of any other major religion. 11
Membership Over Time
In its January 27, 2011 report, Pew Research Center estimated about 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide as of 2010, 23.4 percent of the estimated 6.9 billion global population, compiled from roughly 1,500 sources across 232 countries and territories. 12
Membership Over Time
Pew's June 2025 update to its global religion modeling revised its own 2010 Muslim estimate upward to 1.7 billion (24 percent of world population), a modest revision of the 2011 report's 1.6 billion figure for the same year, both recorded here side by side rather than one replacing the other. 11
Membership Figure As Of
2010-01-01 11
Membership Figure As Of
2011-01-27 12
Membership Figure As Of
2020-01-01 11
Basis of the Membership Figure
Independent Survey 11
Basis of the Membership Figure
Scholarly or Demographic Estimate 11
Reach
Adherents Today
2,000,000,000 7
Corrected from 1.95 billion to 2.0 billion to match this atlas's own cited source (Pew Research Center, How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020) and its own Where Muslims Live Now article, both of which already give 2.0 billion for 2020, up from 1.7 billion in 2010.
Practice
Practice Status
Partly restricted: some elements are closed to outsiders 8
Sourced to the subject's own accountIslamic scripture and teaching are published worldwide and Islam is one of the most extensively documented living religions. One access restriction is enforced rather than merely customary: the city of Mecca and its Grand Mosque are closed to non-Muslims by Saudi law, so participation in the Hajj and in worship there is limited to Muslims by the tradition's own rule and the state that administers it.
Giving
Standing Giving Expectation
Zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam, obliges a Muslim whose accumulated wealth exceeds a minimum threshold (nisab) to give 2.5 percent of that qualifying wealth annually. The Quran (9:60) names eight categories of recipients. In several Muslim-majority countries zakat is collected by the state itself rather than left to the individual, giving the obligation a legal as well as a religious force there; elsewhere it is a personal duty of conscience understood to be as central to Islamic practice as prayer and fasting. 9
Standard Rate Expected
Two and a half percent. 9
How the Expectation Is Enforced
Codified Obligation With Consequences 9
Law and State
Establishment Status
Varies by Province 10
Islam is named the state religion by constitution or statute in dozens of countries with differing force: Saudi Arabia's 1992 Basic Law of Governance makes the Quran and Sunna themselves the state's constitution; Malaysia's 1957 Federal Constitution names Islam the religion of the Federation in Article 3 while guaranteeing other faiths free practice; Iran's 1979 constitution establishes Twelver Ja'fari Shia Islam specifically as the official religion in Article 12; and Bangladesh's constitution, amended in 1988, names Islam the state religion in Article 2A while affirming equal status for other religions, so establishment ranges from an exclusive religious constitution to a largely symbolic declaration.
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What Muslims Hold

Islam is often described as a religion of practice rather than of creed, and the description is fair as far as it goes. What must be believed is short: that God is one, without partner, offspring or image; that he has sent messengers to every nation; that scriptures were given to some of them; that angels exist; that there will be a resurrection and a judgement; and that what happens is subject to God's decree.

The Quran is understood not as a book about revelation but as revelation itself, God's speech in Arabic, received by Muhammad over some twenty-three years and unaltered since. That belief explains the weight placed on the Arabic text, on recitation as a discipline in its own right, and on the reluctance to call a translation a Quran at all. Alongside it stands the hadith, the reports of what Muhammad said, did and permitted, collected and sifted for reliability in the centuries after his death and second only to the Quran as a source of law.

Obligation is organised around five pillars: the declaration that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is his messenger; prayer five times daily facing Mecca; the alms levy; the daylight fast of Ramadan; and the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca required once of those able to make it. None of this requires a priesthood. There are scholars, judges and prayer leaders, and their authority rests on learning and community recognition rather than on ordination.

Around the pillars grew sharia, less a fixed code than the body of reasoning by which scholars derive God's requirements from the sources, covering worship, diet, commerce, marriage and inheritance. Its interpretation has never been uniform, and the question of who is entitled to interpret it is among the most contested in the modern Muslim world.

Sunni, Shia and the Schools

The division that most defines Islam began as a question of leadership rather than doctrine. Muhammad died in 632 without a succession arrangement his followers all accepted. The majority came to hold that the community's elders had chosen rightly in Abu Bakr and the caliphs who followed him; a minority held that authority belonged to Ali, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, and to his descendants. Those positions hardened over generations into the Sunni and Shia traditions, and each reads the same early history very differently.

The killing of Ali's son Husayn at Karbala in 680 gave Shia Islam its central act of commemoration and much of its temper. Shia thought developed the doctrine of the imamate: that a line of divinely guided descendants of Ali carried the authority to interpret revelation. The largest Shia branch, the Twelvers, holds that the twelfth of these entered concealment and will return; the Ismailis and the Zaydis count the line differently. Sunnis, the large majority of Muslims, recognise no such office and locate authority in the consensus of the scholars.

Both traditions produced schools of law. Four survive among Sunnis, the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafii and Hanbali, differing on method and detail rather than fundamentals and generally recognising one another as valid; the Shia Jafari school stands alongside them. A Muslim ordinarily follows the school prevailing where he lives.

Cutting across all of it is Sufism, the devotional and mystical current organised into orders around teachers and disciplines of remembrance. For centuries it was the ordinary texture of Muslim piety and a principal agent of the religion's spread in Africa and in South and Southeast Asia. Since the eighteenth century, reform movements arguing for a stripped-down practice drawn directly from Quran and hadith have contested that inheritance, and the argument between them remains one of the live fault lines within Sunni Islam.

Where Muslims Live Now

The common association of Islam with the Arab world understates its reach considerably. Arabs are a minority of Muslims. The largest Muslim populations are in South and Southeast Asia, chiefly Indonesia, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, and the Asia-Pacific region holds more Muslims than the Middle East and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa together.

By the Pew Research Center's counts the global Muslim population rose from about 1.7 billion in 2010 to about 2.0 billion in 2020, growing roughly twice as fast as the world's population and moving from 24 to 26 per cent of it. That growth is mainly demographic, a matter of a younger population and higher fertility, rather than of conversion, and it is fastest in sub-Saharan Africa.

Arabic remains the language of prayer everywhere, which gives the religion a textual unity its geography might not suggest. Practice nonetheless varies widely with local custom, legal school and the degree to which the state involves itself in religion. Muslim-majority countries range from the constitutionally secular to those where classical law is enforced by the state, and the proper relationship between religious and political authority is argued over in all of them.

Substantial Muslim minorities live in Western Europe, North America, Russia, China and elsewhere, some through twentieth-century migration and some long-settled and indigenous, and their legal and social circumstances differ sharply from one country to the next.

Spread History
Islam Spread Map Afghanistan Albania Algeria Angola Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Federated States of Micronesia Fiji Finland France French Polynesia Gabon Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Guam Guatemala Haiti Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Ivory Coast Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Laos Latvia Lebanon Libya Lithuania Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Mali Malta Mauritius Mexico Moldova Mongolia Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nigeria North Macedonia Norway Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands South Africa South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tanzania Thailand Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vatican City Venezuela Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe Islam Arises in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, 610 to 622, ArrivedIslam Is Established at Medina, Saudi Arabia, 622, EstablishedIslam Reaches Persia, Iran, 633 to 651, EstablishedIslam Reaches Syria, Syria, 634 to 636, EstablishedIslam Reaches Egypt, Egypt, 639 to 642, EstablishedIslam Reaches China Under the Tang Dynasty, China, 651, ArrivedIslam Reaches Iberia, Spain, 711 to 718, ArrivedIslam Is Established on the Swahili Coast, Tanzania, 780 to 1300, EstablishedIslam Is Established Among the Turkic Peoples of Central Asia, Central Asia, 892 to 1005, EstablishedIslam Is Established in the Mali Empire, Mali, 1050 to 1337, EstablishedThe Reconquista Suppresses Islam in Spain, Spain, 1085 to 1492, SuppressedIslam Is Extinguished in Sicily After the Norman and Hohenstaufen Conquest, Italy, 1189 to 1246, ExtinctIslam Spreads in South Asia Through the Chishti Order, India, 1192 to 1236, EstablishedIslam Becomes the State Religion of the Golden Horde, Central Asian Steppe, 1252 to 1321, EstablishedThe Mongol Sack of Baghdad Ends the Abbasid Caliphate, Iraq, 1258, SuppressedIslam Reaches the Indonesian Archipelago, Indonesia, 1267 to 1500, ArrivedIslam Reaches the Philippines via the Sulu Sultanate, Philippines, 1380 to 1390, ArrivedThe Ottoman Empire Establishes Islam as Dominant in Bulgaria, Bulgaria, 1396 to 1580, DominantIslam Is Established in Bosnia Under Ottoman Rule, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1463 to 1600, EstablishedThe Moriscos Are Expelled From Spain, Spain, 1492 to 1614, ExtinctThe Mughal Empire Establishes Islam as Dominant in North India, India, 1526 to 1600, DominantSheikh Yusuf's Exile Establishes Islam at the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, 1694, ArrivedAyuba Suleiman Diallo's Enslavement Documents Islam in Colonial Maryland, United States, 1731, ArrivedThe Sokoto Caliphate Spreads Islam Across West Africa, Nigeria, 1804 to 1808, DominantIslam Reaches the Americas, Americas, 1900, ArrivedSoviet Rule Suppresses Islam in Central Asia, Central Asia, 1917 to 1985, SuppressedIslam Reaches Western Europe Through Postwar Labor Migration, Western Europe, 1945 to 1980, ArrivedIslam Is Revived in Central Asia After Soviet Rule, Central Asia, 1991, RevivedChina Launches Mass Internment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, China, 2017, Suppressed

Marker size and shape show how established Islam was there: a small filled dot for an arrival, a larger one for an established or dominant presence, and a hollow, distinct marker where it was suppressed or nearly disappeared, never simply absent.

View the Full Spread Map

  1. Islam Arises in MeccaSaudi Arabia, 610 to 622, Arrived
  2. Islam Is Established at MedinaSaudi Arabia, 622, Established
  3. Islam Reaches PersiaIran, 633 to 651, Established
  4. Islam Reaches SyriaSyria, 634 to 636, Established
  5. Islam Reaches EgyptEgypt, 639 to 642, Established
  6. Islam Reaches China Under the Tang DynastyChina, 651, Arrived
  7. Islam Reaches IberiaSpain, 711 to 718, Arrived
  8. Islam Is Established on the Swahili CoastTanzania, 780 to 1300, Established
  9. Islam Is Established Among the Turkic Peoples of Central AsiaCentral Asia, 892 to 1005, Established
  10. Islam Is Established in the Mali EmpireMali, 1050 to 1337, Established
  11. The Reconquista Suppresses Islam in SpainSpain, 1085 to 1492, Suppressed
  12. Islam Is Extinguished in Sicily After the Norman and Hohenstaufen ConquestItaly, 1189 to 1246, Extinct
  13. Islam Spreads in South Asia Through the Chishti OrderIndia, 1192 to 1236, Established
  14. Islam Becomes the State Religion of the Golden HordeCentral Asian Steppe, 1252 to 1321, Established
  15. The Mongol Sack of Baghdad Ends the Abbasid CaliphateIraq, 1258, Suppressed
  16. Islam Reaches the Indonesian ArchipelagoIndonesia, 1267 to 1500, Arrived
  17. Islam Reaches the Philippines via the Sulu SultanatePhilippines, 1380 to 1390, Arrived
  18. The Ottoman Empire Establishes Islam as Dominant in BulgariaBulgaria, 1396 to 1580, Dominant
  19. Islam Is Established in Bosnia Under Ottoman RuleBosnia and Herzegovina, 1463 to 1600, Established
  20. The Moriscos Are Expelled From SpainSpain, 1492 to 1614, Extinct
  21. The Mughal Empire Establishes Islam as Dominant in North IndiaIndia, 1526 to 1600, Dominant
  22. Sheikh Yusuf's Exile Establishes Islam at the Cape of Good HopeSouth Africa, 1694, Arrived
  23. Ayuba Suleiman Diallo's Enslavement Documents Islam in Colonial MarylandUnited States, 1731, Arrived
  24. The Sokoto Caliphate Spreads Islam Across West AfricaNigeria, 1804 to 1808, Dominant
  25. Islam Reaches the AmericasAmericas, 1900, Arrived
  26. Soviet Rule Suppresses Islam in Central AsiaCentral Asia, 1917 to 1985, Suppressed
  27. Islam Reaches Western Europe Through Postwar Labor MigrationWestern Europe, 1945 to 1980, Arrived
  28. Islam Is Revived in Central Asia After Soviet RuleCentral Asia, 1991, Revived
  29. China Launches Mass Internment of Uyghur Muslims in XinjiangChina, 2017, Suppressed
Within Islam
In the Texts
Genesis 12:1-3The Holy Bible, American Standard Versioncovenant

Now Jehovah said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee: and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and be thou a blessing: and I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will I curse: and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

Abraham (Ibrahim) is honoured in Islam as the first muslim, one who submits.

The Holy Bible, American Standard Version. translated by American Revision Committee.

About This Passage

Quran 1:1-7 (al-Fatiha)The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)prayer

IN the name of the merciful and compassionate God. Praise belongs to God, the Lord of the worlds, the merciful, the compassionate, the ruler of the day of judgment! Thee we serve and Thee we ask for aid. Guide us in the right path, the path of those Thou art gracious to; not of those Thou art wroth with; nor of those who err.

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Quran 112:1-4 (al-Ikhlas)The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)the oneness of God

Say, 'He is God alone! God the Eternal! He begets not and is not begotten! Nor is there like unto Him any one!'

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Quran 17:24 (Palmer 17:25)The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)family duty

And lower to them the wing of humility out of compassion, and say, 'O Lord! have compassion on them as they brought me up when I was little!'

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Quran 2:255 (Ayat al-Kursi; Palmer 2:256)The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)the oneness of God

God, there is no god but He, the living, the self-subsistent. Slumber takes Him not, nor sleep. His is what is in the heavens and what is in the earth. Who is it that intercedes with Him save by His permission? He knows what is before them and what behind them, and they comprehend not aught of His knowledge but of what He pleases. His throne extends over the heavens and the earth, and it tires Him not to guard them both, for He is high and grand.

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Quran 2:256 (Palmer 2:257)The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)religious freedom, contested

There is no compulsion in religion; the right way has been distinguished from the wrong, and whoso disbelieves in Taghut and believes in God, he has got hold of the firm handle in which is no breaking off; but God both hears and knows.

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Quran 24:35 (the Light Verse)The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)light and guidance

God is the light of the heavens and the earth; His light is as a niche in which is a lamp, and the lamp is in a glass, the glass is as though it were a glittering star; it is lit from a blessed tree, an olive neither of the east nor of the west, the oil of which would well-nigh give light though no fire touched it,, light upon light!, God guides to His light whom He pleases; and God strikes out parables for men, and God all things doth know.

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Quran 5:32 (Palmer 5:15 numbering)The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)the value of a life

For this cause have we prescribed to the children of Israel that whoso kills a soul, unless it be for another soul or for violence in the land, it is as though he had killed men altogether; but whoso saves one, it is as though he saved men altogether.

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Quran 55:1-9The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)balance and order

The Merciful taught the Qur'an; He created man, taught him plain speech. The sun and the moon have their appointed time; The herbs and the trees adore; And the heavens, He raised them and set the balance, that ye should not be outrageous in the balance; But weigh ye aright, and stint not the balance. And the earth He has set it for living creatures;

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Quran 96:1-5The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9)revelation

READ, in the name of thy Lord! Who created man from congealed blood! Read, for thy Lord is most generous! Who taught the pen! Taught man what he did not know!

The Qur'an (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 6 and 9). translated by E. H. Palmer.

About This Passage

Correspondences & Relations

Pantheons

Cross-Tradition Connections

Affirmation Of

Ash'ari kalam, the dominant school of Sunni theology, holds occasionalism as a defense of unlimited divine power, developed influentially by Al-Ghazali.

Source Al-Ghazali's Philosophical TheologyFrank Griffel

Also Functions As

This edge names tradition membership rather than a contested claim in its own right. Rachel's Tomb's own tradition fact already records it as Jewish and Islamic, in full.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

One building, divided since 1994, entered separately as a synagogue and as a mosque under military control.

Source Hebron/Al-Khalil Old Town, UNESCO World Heritage ListUNESCO World Heritage Committee

Associated With

The Damascus killings were carried out by a local Muslim mob, joined by some irregular fighters, and scholarship including Rogan's holds the Ottoman provincial governor, himself Muslim, responsible for failing to prevent or halt the violence; an international commission of inquiry and the Ottoman government's own later executions of implicated officials treated it as a grave crime rather than a legitimate religious act. This edge names the perpetrating mob's and the failing officials' religious identity as the historical sources give it; it is not an assertion that Islam as a religion caused the massacre, and mainstream Ottoman Islamic authority itself punished those responsible.

The island's Muslim Moor trading community was the target of the rioting and the property destruction that ran through the summer of 1915.

Source The Action Phase of the 1915 RiotsCharles S. Blackton

Muslim residents of Ahmedabad were the overwhelming majority of those killed and dispossessed in the riots, per Kumar's study and the Reddy Commission's own findings.

Muslim residents of Ahmedabad and other Gujarat cities and towns were the overwhelming majority of those killed, displaced and dispossessed in the violence.

The formative centuries of Islamic law, theology and science fall under Abbasid rule, and Baghdad was their working centre.

Afghanistan, Countries

Sunni Islam of the Hanafi school predominates, with a Shia Hazara minority; about 99% Muslim overall.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

The tradition's liturgical, scriptural or ancestral language belongs to this family.

Albania, Countries

The largest affiliation at about 57 per cent, making Albania the only European country with a Muslim majority; Tirana has been the world headquarters of the Bektashi order since 1925.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Algeria, Countries

About 99 per cent Sunni Maliki, with a distinct Ibadi community among the Mozabite Berbers of the Mzab valley.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

Founded the Mouridiyya, one of the great Sufi orders of West Africa, teaching a pacifist path of work and devotion under colonial rule.

A tradition held by peoples inside this grouping. The grouping is not itself a religious body.

Amman, Cities

The Amman Message, endorsed in the city in July 2005, set out three points on the boundaries of Islam.

Source The Amman MessageRoyal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought

Arab traders carried Islam to the Malabar and Konkan coasts centuries before any Muslim army reached southern India.

Arabs, Cultures

Islam arose among the Arabs and made Arabic its liturgical language.

The Archaeological Survey of India's collections include Islamic era inscriptions.

Source Archaeological Survey of India (institutional record)the holders' own account
Azerbaijan, Countries

About 96 per cent of the population, with a Shia majority inherited from Safavid rule and a substantial Sunni minority.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Bahrain, Countries

The state religion, with a Shia majority among citizens under a Sunni ruling family, a configuration central to the politics of 2011 and after.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Bangladesh, Countries

About 91 per cent of the population, Sunni of the Hanafi school, spread historically through Sufi teachers rather than conquest.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Belgium, Countries

About 7 per cent of the population, of Moroccan and Turkish origin and concentrated in Brussels and the industrial cities; a state funded recognised faith since 1974.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Bengal, Regions

Eastern Bengal has a Muslim majority shaped by centuries of Sufi preaching.

Muslim personal law was codified separately under the same administration.

Benin, Countries

A large Muslim community alongside Vodun and Christianity.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

About 51 per cent of the population, present since Ottoman rule from 1463, with Naqshbandi and Mevlevi tekkes and a distinctive urban endowment culture.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Bulgaria, Countries

Roughly a tenth of the population, comprising ethnic Turks and Bulgarian speaking Pomaks, subjected to a forced renaming campaign in the 1980s.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

About 63 per cent of the population, mostly Sunni Maliki with strong Tijaniyya influence, under severe pressure from jihadist violence since 2015.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Burundi, Countries

A small minority, concentrated in Bujumbura and the trading towns along the historic caravan routes.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

The Mingana Collection includes the two parchment leaves of a Quran radiocarbon dated in 2015 to between 568 and 645 CE.

Source San'a' 1 and the Origins of the Qur'anBehnam Sadeghi and Mohsen Goudarzi
Cameroon, Countries

About 20 per cent of the population, concentrated in the north where Fulani emirates established after the Sokoto jihad still structure authority.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

The Seleka coalition that launched the war was drawn overwhelmingly from the country's Muslim minority.

Central Asia, Regions

Bukhara and Samarkand became centres of Islamic learning after the Arab conquests.

Classical Arabic is the canon language of Islam, the language of the Qur'an and of the five daily prayers regardless of a worshipper's native tongue.

Cyprus, Countries

The Turkish Cypriot community is Sunni Muslim, and the Hala Sultan Tekke at Larnaca is a major regional shrine.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

The house holds the parchments recovered from the roof of the Great Mosque of Sana'a, including the palimpsest that is the only substantial witness to a Quranic text beside the standard one.

Source San'a' 1 and the Origins of the Qur'anBehnam Sadeghi and Mohsen Goudarzi

The Quran retells the destruction of the cities of the plain in the account of Lut, naming their ruins as a sign for those who pass by.

Source The Dead Sea: Myth, History, and PoliticsBarbara Kreiger
Deccan, Regions

The Bahmani kingdom and the Deccan sultanates brought Persianate Islam to the plateau.

Djenne, Cities

Alongside Timbuktu, Djenne was a major center of Islamic scholarship, home to Quranic schools, in the Mali and later Songhai empires.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)
East Africa, Regions

East Africa carries a long Swahili coast history of Islam carried by Indian Ocean trade.

Egypt, Countries

About 90% Sunni Muslim.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

The Egyptian state body responsible for administering waqf, Islamic religious endowments, and overseeing the country's mosques.

Source Held in Trust: Waqf in the Islamic WorldPascale Ghazaleh (ed.)
Ethiopia, Countries

About 32 to 34% Muslim, mostly Sunni.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

Reads the classical schools of Islamic fiqh against the conditions of Muslims living as minorities in Europe.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)

The Ottoman sultan caliph proclaimed jihad in November 1914, and the war's outcome ended in the abolition of the caliphate in 1924.

Gabon, Countries
Gao, Cities

Became capital of the Songhai Empire after the ruler Kossoi converted to Islam around 1010 and undertook the hajj.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)
Georgia, Countries

About 11 per cent of the population, among the Georgian speaking community of Adjara and the Azeri community of Kvemo Kartli.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Ghana, Countries

About 18 per cent of the population, concentrated in the northern regions.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Green, Colors

Green carries a settled positive association in Islam, tied to paradise and to the Prophet, and appears widely on flags, mosque furnishing and bindings. The European medieval reading of green as unstable and unlucky ran in the opposite direction over the same centuries.

Source Green: The History of a ColorMichel Pastoureau

The West African packet holds a written Quranic verse or other words of power, so the object belongs to West African Islamic practice before it belongs to anything in Louisiana, where the word later became a general term for a conjure charm.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Hagar, Figures

Her running between Safa and Marwa is retraced by every pilgrim on the hajj as the sa'i.

Iberia, Regions

Al-Andalus ruled much of the peninsula for centuries and made Cordoba a centre of learning.

India, Countries

About 14 to 15% Muslim, one of the largest Muslim populations in the world by absolute number.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

Muslim merchant communities ran from Mogadishu to Malacca by the thirteenth century, and conversion proceeded through trade and marriage rather than armies.

Indonesia, Countries

About 87% Muslim, overwhelmingly Sunni; the world's largest Muslim population.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Iran, Countries

About 90 to 95% Twelver Shia Muslim, the historical heartland of Zoroastrianism before Islam.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Iraq, Countries

About 55 to 60% Shia Muslim and 35 to 40% Sunni Muslim.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

The group claims Islamic legitimacy for itself; mainstream Sunni and Shia scholarship rejects the claim.

Israel, Countries

About 18% of the population is Muslim.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Ivory Coast, Countries

About 42 per cent of the population, concentrated in the northern regions.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Jordan, Countries

About 95 to 97% Sunni Muslim.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Kabyle, Cultures
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The demonstration that was hijacked into rioting began as a Muslim protest against the newspaper article.

Kaduna's Muslim community, whose youths responded to the Christian protest with violence, and whose adoption of Sharia criminal law was the proposal at issue.

KAICIID, Organizations
Source KAICIID Dialogue Centre (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Kazakhstan, Countries

About 70 per cent of the population, Sunni of the Hanafi school, spread through Sufi networks including the Yasawi order at Turkistan.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Khiva, Cities

Its walled old town grew into one of Central Asia's most complete surviving assemblages of Islamic mosques, madrasas and mausolea.

Source Sufism: A Global HistoryNile Green

The earliest surviving Quran manuscripts are written in Kufic.

Kuwait, Countries

Islam is the religion of the state under the 1962 constitution, with a Sunni majority and a Shia minority of roughly a quarter to a third among citizens.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Kyrgyz, Languages

The Kyrgyz have been Muslim for centuries, and the Islamic vocabulary of the language came through Chagatai from Arabic and Persian.

Source Oral Epics of Central AsiaNora K. Chadwick and Victor Zhirmunsky
Lebanese Civil War, Wars & Conflicts

Lebanon's Sunni and Shia Muslim communities were principal parties to the war, but the war was fought across, not by, one tradition.

Source A History of Modern LebanonFawwaz Traboulsi
Lebanon, Countries

No census since 1932; widely used estimates place the population at roughly 60 to 65% Muslim, split closely between Sunni and Shia.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Libya, Countries

About 97 per cent Sunni Maliki; the Sanusiyya Sufi order led resistance to Italian rule and supplied the monarchy of 1951 to 1969.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Madagascar, Countries

A long established minority on the northwest coast, arriving through Comorian and Indian Ocean trade.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Malawi, Countries

About 14 per cent at the 2018 census, adopted through the nineteenth century lake trade and strongest among the Yao of the lakeshore and south.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Malaysia, Countries

Islam is the religion of the Federation under Article 3, and state Sharia courts hold jurisdiction over Muslims in family law and religious offences.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Mali, Countries

About 90 to 95% Sunni Muslim, shaped historically by Sufi brotherhoods including the Tijaniyya and Qadiriyya.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

The rulers were Muslim, and Mansa Musa's pilgrimage of 1324 brought scholars, mosque building and Maliki law into the empire.

Source Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African HistoryNehemia Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins (eds.)
Maninka, Languages

Islam has been established in the Manding world for centuries, and the epic carries a layer of Muslim reference over older material.

Source Sundiata: An Epic of Old MaliD. T. Niane, translated by G. D. Pickett
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Mary, Figures

She is the only woman named in the Quran, and is honoured in Islam as the mother of the prophet Isa.

Mauritius, Countries

About 17 per cent, largely descended from Gujarati traders and Bihari indentured labourers; the Jummah Mosque in Port Louis is the community's historic centre.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

Brought to the sea's entire southern and eastern rim by the seventh and eighth century Arab conquests

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Morocco, Countries

Almost the entire population follows Sunni Islam of the Maliki school, with the king holding the title Commander of the Faithful and the Tijaniyya and Boutchichiya Sufi orders prominent.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Mozambique, Countries

About one fifth of the population, concentrated on the northern coast, where Indian Ocean trade brought Islam centuries before Portuguese rule.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

The official religious administrative body overseeing Islamic affairs in Uzbekistan.

Source Muslim Board of Uzbekistan (institutional record)the holders' own account

The same bowl carries Quranic inscriptions cut into it long after it was made, so one object in this museum sits inside two traditions in sequence rather than one.

Source National Museum of Afghanistan (institutional record)the holders' own account
Netherlands, Countries

About 5 per cent of the population, chiefly of Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese origin.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
New York, Cities

The Nation of Islam's Temple Number Seven in Harlem was Malcolm X's base.

Nigeria, Countries

Roughly 45 to 50% Muslim, concentrated in the north.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

About 33 per cent of the population, almost entirely within the ethnic Albanian and Turkish communities, with Bektashi tekkes including Arabati Baba at Tetovo.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

The declaration speaks with esteem of Muslims, who adore the one God, and urges that past quarrels be set aside.

Source Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 volumesNorman P. Tanner (ed.)
Oman, Countries

A majority of citizens follow Ibadi Islam, the only country where it predominates, alongside Sunni and Shia Omani minorities.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

The sultans held the guardianship of Mecca and Medina from 1517 and claimed the caliphate, which the Turkish assembly abolished in 1924.

Pakistan, Countries

About 96% Muslim, roughly 85 to 90% Sunni and 10 to 15% Shia.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Palestine, Countries

About 97 to 98% Sunni Muslim.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Partition of India, Wars & Conflicts

Muslim communities, chiefly in Punjab and Bengal, were both targets and, in the same reciprocal violence, perpetrators against Hindu and Sikh neighbors during Partition, and Pakistan was created as the partition's Muslim-majority successor state.

Source Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, The Partition of India (2009)Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh
Pehlwani, Practices

Muslim pehlwans and their pious disciplines are central to the art's history

A courtly art with devotional strands, from Miraj imagery to Sufi poetry illustration

Philippines, Countries

About 6 per cent of the population, present since the fourteenth century and concentrated in western Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Polygyny, Doctrines

Islamic law permits up to four wives with the condition of just treatment.

Punjabis, Cultures

Islam is the majority tradition west of the partition border in Punjab.

Qatar, Countries

Sunni Islam of a Hanbali and Wahhabi influenced tradition is the state religion, and the state funds the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

The caliphate that followed Muhammad's death in 632, under which the Quran received its authoritative written form.

Source Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval SpainJoseph F. O'Callaghan

The Quran tells the drowning of Pharaoh, and the sea has carried African pilgrims to Jeddah for the hajj ever since.

Source Religions for Peace (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Rohingya, Cultures

The Rohingya are Sunni Muslim with a strong Sufi devotional layer.

A Muslim Spiritual Assembly with a state-appointed mufti was established at Orenburg in 1788, making the empire an arbiter of Islamic orthodoxy.

Rwanda, Countries

A minority of about two per cent, which grew after 1994 partly because mosques were widely seen to have sheltered people during the genocide.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

State religion; about 93% Sunni and 5 to 6% Shia, home to Mecca and Medina.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

The tradition's liturgical, scriptural or ancestral language belongs to this family.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Senegal, Countries

About 96 per cent of the population, organised through the Tijaniyya centred on Tivaouane and Kaolack and the Mouridiyya centred on Touba.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Sikh-Mughal Wars, Wars & Conflicts

The Mughal Empire's ruling dynasty and state administration were Islamic; several of the conflict's flashpoints, including both Gurus' executions, are read in the traditional and much of the general literature as acts of religious enforcement by that Islamic state authority against the Sikh faith.

Silat, Practices

Many, not all, lineages are explicitly Islamic; spiritual framing varies by school

Singapore, Countries

About 15 per cent of the population, chiefly the Malay community served by mosques administered under the Islamic Religious Council.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

State religion of the ruling and scholarly elite, most systematically under Askia Muhammad.

South Sudan, Countries

A minority of roughly six per cent, mainly in the towns and along the border with Sudan.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

Mosques, madrasas and Islamic courts were closed across Central Asia and the Caucasus, and practice continued largely outside the registered structures.

Source Religion and the Cold WarDianne Kirby (editor)
Sudan, Countries

Predominantly Sunni, organised through the Khatmiyya and Ansar Sufi brotherhoods, whose leading families are also political dynasties.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Suriname, Countries

About 14 per cent of the population, the highest share of any country in the western hemisphere, drawn from both Indian and Javanese indentureship.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Switzerland, Countries

About 5 per cent of the population, largely of Balkan and Turkish origin.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Syria, Countries

Before 2011, roughly 74% Sunni Muslim with an 11% Alawite minority.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Taliban, Organizations

Governs in the name of its own interpretation of Islamic law.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Tanzania, Countries

Roughly 35 per cent nationally and almost the entire population of Zanzibar, an inheritance of Swahili coastal Islam and Omani rule.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

Muslim residents, businesses and places of worship were the systematic target of the January 1993 violence in particular, the Srikrishna Commission's own central finding.

Muslim worshippers gathered for Ramadan dawn prayers were the massacre's target, killed inside the Ibrahimi Mosque hall of the shared shrine.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

The demolished structure was a mosque, and Muslim communities and property across India bore the heaviest losses of the nationwide riots that followed.

Source Report of the Liberhan Ayodhya Commission of InquiryJustice Manmohan Singh Liberhan (Commission of Inquiry)

The amendment turns on a legal definition of Muslim identity rather than affirming Islam itself.

Source Constitution (Second Amendment) Act, 1974 (Pakistan)National Assembly of Pakistan
Source God's War: A New History of the CrusadesChristopher Tyerman

Mosques in the northwest were closed and in places destroyed.

The Quran gives the account of the garden and the fall, and uses the same word of it that it uses of the paradise to come.

The Sabians, Religions

The Quran names the Sabians beside Jews and Christians, which is why the identification carried legal weight under Muslim rule.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)

A 2005 ruling in which scholars from Sunni, Shia and Ibadi Islam recognised one another's schools as valid.

Source The Amman MessageRoyal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought

Islam affirms the conception of Jesus without a father while rejecting the sonship that Christian doctrine draws from it.

The wider religion within which this is an intra-Islamic dispute over practice, not a persecution of Islam by an outside actor; both the demolishing Wahhabi movement and the mourning Shia and Sunni communities are Muslim.

A state museum in a former palace, not a mosque. Its Chamber of the Sacred Relics keeps objects venerated in Islam that the Ottoman sultans gathered as guardians of the holy cities.

About 5 per cent of the population; the Muharram observance known locally as Hosay has been shared across religious lines since the nineteenth century.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Tunisia, Countries

About 99% Sunni Muslim; the Great Mosque of Kairouan is considered a foundational center of Islamic learning in North Africa.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Turkey, Countries

About 96 to 99% Muslim, Sunni Hanafi majority with a substantial Alevi minority.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

The tradition's liturgical, scriptural or ancestral language belongs to this family.

Uganda, Countries

About 14 per cent of the population, present since nineteenth century trade contacts with the Swahili coast.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

The dynasty gave Islam its first monumental public form, in Arabic administration, imageless coinage and the Dome of the Rock.

The official religion; Abu Dhabi hosted the 2019 Document on Human Fraternity and opened the Abrahamic Family House in 2023.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Uttar Pradesh, Regions

Deoband and the Nadwatul Ulama at Lucknow shaped modern South Asian Islam.

Uzbekistan, Countries

About 96% Sunni Muslim of the Hanafi school.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center
Source World Congress of Faiths (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Yemen, Countries

Almost the entire population, divided between a Shafii Sunni majority and Zaydi Shia communities in the northern highlands.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

Derived from This

Din-i-Ilahi, Religions

Akbar and the great majority of the Din-i-Ilahi's courtier following were formally Muslim; the order layered a personal discipleship and comparative ethic on top of that base rather than replacing it wholesale.

Founded By

Muhammad, Figures
Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)

Holidays Observed

Friday (Yawm al-Jumu'ah) is the day of congregational prayer in Islam; the noon Jumu'ah prayer at the mosque is obligatory for Muslim men.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

The agitation was organized by Muslim religious parties under an explicitly Islamic banner, demanding Ahmadis be declared outside the fold of Islam by law; this edge connects that organizing identity to the riots without asserting the violence as Islam's own position, since the Munir Report itself found no consensus even among the testifying ulema on the theological question the agitation claimed to settle.

Source Report of the Court of Inquiry into the Punjab Disturbances of 1953Justice Muhammad Munir and Justice M.R. Kayani, Court of Inquiry

Authored and signed exclusively by Muslim scholars, clerics and intellectuals.

Source The ACW Document, A Common Word Between Us and YouRoyal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought
Abu Bakr, Figures
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Abu Talib, Figures
Source Encyclopaedia of Islam (Brill), 2nd and 3rd editionsP. Bearman et al. (eds.)
Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz
Adl, Doctrines

Sirhindi wrote and taught as a Sunni Sufi scholar within Islam.

Source Mystical Dimensions of IslamAnnemarie Schimmel
Source The Sufi Orders in IslamJ. Spencer Trimingham
Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Alchemy, Disciplines

Islamic scholars carried alchemy from Alexandria to Europe and gave it much of its vocabulary, alkali, alembic and elixir, through figures such as Jabir ibn Hayyan; it was pursued privately by learned men and never held any standing in Islamic law or worship.

Source Psychology and AlchemyC.G. Jung
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Alevism, Denominations

Why this is disputed. Turkish state institutions and much of the Alevi communitys own self understanding place Alevism within Islam, tracing its roots to Shia veneration of Ali, Sufi mysticism and older Anatolian folk tradition. Scholarship on the community, including the study cited here, treats that classification itself as historically contested: Alevi worship in the cemevi rather than the mosque, and its absence of the five daily prayers, the Ramadan fast and the hajj in their standard forms, lead some scholars to read Alevi Islam as a category actively constructed and negotiated rather than simply inherited.

Al-Fatiha, Prayers
Source The Quran, Sacred Books of the East, volumes 6 and 9E. H. Palmer (translator)
Source Islamic Creeds: A SelectionW. Montgomery Watt
Al-Ghazali, Figures
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Ali, Figures
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Al-MuwattaMalik ibn Anas
Amen, Mantras

Derived from the tradition recorded on the mantra, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The Andalusi codex is the western form of the Quran manuscript, written in Maghribi script.

Source Islamic CalligraphySheila S. Blair

Islam holds belief in angels an article of faith, created of light and without power to disobey, with Jibril bringing the revelation and Munkar and Nakir questioning the dead. The jinn are a separate order made of smokeless fire and, unlike angels, may be good or evil.

Source Pseudomonarchia DaemonumJohann Weyer
Apocalypse, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Aqeeqah, Rituals
Source Sahih al-BukhariMuhammad al-Bukhari
Source Islamic Creeds: A SelectionW. Montgomery Watt
Aqiqah, Rituals
Source Sahih al-BukhariMuhammad al-Bukhari
Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Observed across Islam, with sharply different emphasis in Sunni and Shia practice.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Asr, Practices
Source The Qur'an
Ayat al-Kursi, Prayers
Source The Qur'an

Balim Sultan led and reorganized a Sufi order within Islam.

Source The Sufi Orders in IslamJ. Spencer Trimingham
Barakah, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Barzakh, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Basmala, Mantras
Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Bidah, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Blessing, Practices

Muslim usage turns on bismillah before an act and mashallah at the sight of something good.

Source The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)Anonymous (multiple authors)
Burial, Rituals
Source The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)Anonymous (multiple authors)

Alevi tradition within the broader Islamic world; Alevis themselves differ on the relation of their path to Islam.

The Seleka coalition that launched the war in December 2012 was drawn overwhelmingly from the country's Muslim minority in the northeast, and Muslim civilians were the group the later anti-balaka reprisals targeted. This edge connects the Seleka's composition and the reprisal violence's targets to Islam as the sources describe them; it is not a claim that Islam as a faith caused the rebellion, which Lado and Lombard trace to political rather than religious causes.

Source Final Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on the Central African RepublicInternational Commission of Inquiry on the Central African Republic
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Islam has no ordination and no sacramental class. An imam leads prayer and may be any adult who knows the words; the scholars who interpret law are trained and influential but appointed by no rite.

Source Code of Canon Law (Codex Iuris Canonici)Holy Seethe holders' own account
Costus, Incense
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The da'i is an Ismaili missionary office within Islam, descending from the Fatimid dawa.

Source Islamic Mysticism: A Short HistoryAlexander Knysh
Source Jami at-TirmidhiMuhammad al-Tirmidhi

Islam has no fallen angels: Iblis and the shayatin are jinn, made of smokeless fire and possessed of will, so folk and magical traditions treat them as commandable or contractable, while orthodox scholars confine the response to Quranic recitation and ruqya.

Source Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis (The Lesser Key of Solomon)Anonymous (unidentified compiler)

The Sunni schools of law are methods of legal reasoning rather than churches. A Muslim may follow one and pray behind an imam of another, and the schools have no governing bodies or membership rolls.

Source The Social Sources of DenominationalismH. Richard Niebuhr

Dervish is the broader, more public-facing word for a Sufi order's members and mendicants, covering both the formally bound disciple and the itinerant ascetic living outside any settled lodge.

Source The Sufi Orders in IslamJ. Spencer Trimingham

The Sufi ritual of remembrance of God, developed in distinctive forms across Sufi orders.

Source Sufism: A Global HistoryNile Green
Dhuhr, Practices
Source The Qur'an
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Prominent local commanders including Ma Hualong held standing within the Sufi menhuan networks active among Gansu's Hui communities, and the revolt is commonly summarized in general reference works as a Muslim uprising against Qing rule. This edge connects that religious organization and identity to the revolt; it is not a claim the fighting was waged over Islamic doctrine, since Chu's specialist study traces the revolt's actual outbreak to Han-Hui communal friction and provincial governance failure rather than to a declared religious cause.

Source Sahih al-BukhariMuhammad al-Bukhari
Source Oral Epics of Central AsiaNora K. Chadwick and Victor Zhirmunsky
Exorcism, Practices
Source The Exorcism of Anneliese MichelFelicitas D. Goodman

His 1986 title rested the standing of the Saudi ruler on responsibility for Mecca and Medina rather than on sovereignty over a territory.

Fajr, Practices
Source The Qur'an
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Fasting, Practices
Source The Qur'an
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopaedia of Islam (Brill), 2nd and 3rd editionsP. Bearman et al. (eds.)
Fatimah, Figures
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Firdaus, Realms
Fitra, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Islamic astronomers named most of the bright stars still in use, Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Altair and Deneb, and refined their positions, while the lunar mansions served the calendar and prayer times; judicial astrology drawn from the stars was contested by the jurists.

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Gabriel, Archangels

Jibril is the angel of the revelation in the Qur'an.

Source Gandhi (1982 film) (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

The General Presidency is the Saudi state body charged with the care of the Grand Mosque at Mecca and the Prophet's Mosque at Medina, and its remit is defined in religious terms rather than as heritage administration.

Source General Presidency for the Affairs of the Grand Mosque and the Prophets MosqueGeneral Presidency for the Affairs of the Grand Mosque and the Prophet's Mosquethe holders' own account
Geomancy, Disciplines

Geomancy is an Islamic art, ilm al-raml, the science of the sand, developed in medieval North Africa and the Arab world with its sixteen figures and twelve houses and carried into Europe from Arabic sources; the jurists generally condemned divination while the practice persisted widely.

Source Islamic Geomancy and a Thirteenth-Century Divinatory DeviceEmilie Savage-Smith and Marion B. Smith
Ghadab (Wrath), Vices
Source Sahih al-BukhariMuhammad al-Bukhari
Ghusl, Practices
Source The Qur'an

The devotional literature of the South Asian Nizari Ismaili communities, taught in South Asian languages rather than in Arabic.

Clergy or specialist role within Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source The Timurid Architecture of Iran and TuranLisa Golombek and Donald Wilber
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Clergy or specialist role within Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The teaching traced to Haji Bektash Veli sits within Islam, in the heterodox Sufi current the Bektashi Order carried forward.

Source The Sufi Orders in IslamJ. Spencer Trimingham
Halal, Practices
Source Encyclopaedia of Islam (Brill), 2nd and 3rd editionsP. Bearman et al. (eds.)
Haram, Doctrines
Source UNESCO World Heritage ListUnited Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Hasad (Envy), Vices
Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)
Hasan ibn Ali, Figures

Hasan-i Sabbah led a Nizari Ismaili Shia state within Islam.

Source The Assassins: A Radical Sect in IslamBernard Lewis

Its own record calls it the Twelver Shia seminary.

Haya, Doctrines
Source Sahih MuslimMuslim ibn al-Hajjaj
Hifz, Practices
Source The Qur'an
Hijama, Practices
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Ibadism, Denominations
Iblis, Figures
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Ibn Abbas, Figures

Ibn Battuta was a Muslim jurist and traveler whose Rihla records pilgrimage and travel across the medieval Islamic world.

Ibn Taymiyya, Figures
Ihsan, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)
Ijazah, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Sahih al-BukhariMuhammad al-Bukhari
Source An Introduction to Islamic LawWael B. Hallaq

Clergy or specialist role within Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Imamate, Doctrines
Iman, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Imran ibn Hittan was a Kharijite, an early sect of Islam holding that armed rebellion against an unjust ruler is owed to God.

Source Kharijites (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz
Source Iqraa (Wikipedia)
Isha, Practices
Source The Qur'an

A mosque dedicated in 1957, among the first purpose built in the United States.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

An international humanitarian and development charity working on an Islamic basis of charitable giving, including zakat and qurbani programmes, per the charity's own description.

Israfil, Figures
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Istighfar, Mantras
Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz
Istikhara, Practices
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Istisqa, Practices
Source The Qur'an
Itikaf, Practices
Source The Qur'an
Jabriyya, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Jahannam, Realms
Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Jannah, Realms
Jibril, Figures
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Jizya, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Kabir, Figures

He is named as a weaver of a Muslim community of Benares, and Muslim tradition carries its own account of his death.

Source The Shi'is of IraqYitzhak Nakash
Kaffara, Doctrines

A khalifa is a disciple a sheikh has authorized to teach, initiate new members and lead a branch lodge in his name, an office of delegated spiritual authority distinct from political succession.

Source The Sufi Orders in IslamJ. Spencer Trimingham
Source The Sufi Orders in IslamJ. Spencer Trimingham

The khamsa is worn in popular Muslim practice across the Maghreb.

Source The Evil Eye: A CasebookAlan Dundes (editor)

Clergy or specialist role within Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Khidr, Figures
Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)
Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)
Source UNESCO World Heritage ListUnited Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Khums, Practices
Source The Qur'an
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Last Rites, Rituals
Source Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd editionHoly Seethe holders' own account
Source A History of Modern LebanonFawwaz Traboulsi
Maghrib, Practices
Source The Qur'an

The mahmal travelled with the pilgrim caravan as a mark of the state that sent it.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

The Yan Tatsine organized and understood themselves as a religious community following Muhammadu Marwa's own claimed Islamic authority, in explicit and public rupture with the mainstream Sunni clergy of northern Nigeria, who denounced him as a heretic. This edge records that self-organization and that rejection by mainstream Islamic authority; it is not an assertion that Islam as a whole, or northern Nigeria's Muslim community generally, bears responsibility for the violence the risings produced.

Its own record calls it the elementary Quran school of the Islamic world.

Source An Introduction to Islamic LawWael B. Hallaq
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The Java-based Laskar Jihad militia, sent by the thousands from 2000, fought explicitly as a jihadist force on the Muslim side, and local Muslim fighters were the conflict's other organized side.

A West and North African Islamic category, formed in the Maghreb and the Sahara.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Source Code of Canon Law (Codex Iuris Canonici)Holy Seethe holders' own account

Worked as a court astrologer within the early Abbasid Islamic state, though he was himself Jewish by background.

Source Mashallah ibn Athari (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Khalid wrote and taught as a Sunni Sufi shaykh within Islam.

Source Mystical Dimensions of IslamAnnemarie Schimmel
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Medina, Sacred Sites
Mehndi, Practices

Prominent in Muslim wedding customs across South Asia and, under related names, the Middle East and North Africa.

Messiah, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Michael, Archangels

Mika'il is named in the Qur'an, in Surat al-Baqara.

Mikail, Figures
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Mina, Sacred Sites

Mina belongs to Islam, its own tradition field; it fills each year with the tent city of the Hajj.

Source Hajj: Journey to the Heart of IslamVenetia Porter (ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Mizan, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The rebellion opened under the organizational and religious banner of the Khilafat movement, the pan-Islamic campaign to preserve the Ottoman caliphate. Panikkar and Wood disagree on how much weight that religious mobilization carries against the land-tenure grievance against Hindu landlords both also document, and this connects the rebellion to that religious organizing rather than settling what caused the communal violence its later months included.

Source The Moplah Rebellion and Its GenesisConrad Wood

Clergy or specialist role within Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Clergy or specialist role within Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Muhammad, Figures
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Clergy or specialist role within Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Muraqabah, Practices
Source The Qur'an
Source The Sufi Orders in IslamJ. Spencer Trimingham
Murji'a, Doctrines
Source The Sufi Orders in IslamJ. Spencer Trimingham

The Muslim Board of Uzbekistan is the country's official Islamic authority and keeps the Samarkand Kufic Quran as a religious trust rather than as a state antiquity.

Source Muslim Board of Uzbekistan (institutional record)the holders' own account
Nadhr, Rituals
Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)
Nasheed, Sacred Sound

Recorded within the wider Islamic-era Arabic folkloric and cosmographical corpus, alongside jinn-lore proper.

Nasruddin, Figures
Source The Evil Eye: A CasebookAlan Dundes (editor)

The sung devotional poetry of the Alevi and Bektashi traditions, in Turkish and performed within the cem.

Source The Sufi Orders in IslamJ. Spencer Trimingham
Nikah, Rituals

Its own text: "The Quran tells the same account and names the landing place as al-Judi."

Source The Qur'an
Noakhali Riots, Wars & Conflicts

The mobs that carried out the killings, abductions and forced conversions were organized in the tense weeks following the Muslim League's Direct Action Day campaign for a separate Muslim state. Das reads the underlying drivers as a contest over political power and land, with religious identity supplying the organizing line rather than doctrine supplying the cause.

Abjad reckoning assigns numerical values to the Arabic letters and has been used for chronograms, for the mysterious letters that open certain suras, and in the lettrist speculation of the Sufi and Hurufi traditions; the jurists have been unfriendly to divinatory use.

Source Cheiro's Book of NumbersCheiro (William John Warner)
Omnipotence, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Omniscience, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The Padri movement's reform program was drawn from the Wahhabi current within Islam that its clerics encountered on pilgrimage, and the war's opening phase was fought explicitly over how Islam should be practiced in Minangkabau society.

Du Wenxiu took the title Sultan Suleiman in 1856 and governed his Pingnan Guo state at Dali under an explicitly Islamic administration, and general reference treatments commonly describe the rising as a Muslim uprising against Qing rule. This edge records that self-declared religious title and administration; it is not the whole picture, since Atwill's revisionist scholarship argues Yunnan's multiethnic grievances against corrupt provincial rule, not religion alone, drove a movement that also drew substantial Han and Bai support.

Pehlwani, Practices

Muslim pehlwans have been central to the art throughout its history, carrying their own pious disciplines.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

The tradition produced devotional imagery, above all the celebrated Miraj paintings of the Prophet's night ascent.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

Its own record calls it the Indonesian Islamic boarding school.

Pilgrimage, Practices
Source The Qur'an
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Wikipedia, "PK (film)"Wikipedia contributors
Polygyny, Doctrines
Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Source Malay Magic (Skeat)Walter William Skeat
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Muslim militias from Poso Regency's own communities, later reinforced by outside fighters including Laskar Jihad, were one of the two organized parties fighting across all three episodes of the conflict, per van Klinken's field research and Human Rights Watch's investigation. This edge records that community's part in a two-sided war exactly as the sources give it; it does not assign the conflict's origin or greater share of blame to either side.

Prayer, Practices
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source The Quran, Sacred Books of the East, volumes 6 and 9E. H. Palmer (translator)
Source The Quran, Sacred Books of the East, volumes 6 and 9E. H. Palmer (translator)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Prophecy, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Qadariyya, Doctrines
Source An Introduction to Islamic LawWael B. Hallaq

Clergy or specialist role within Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Its own record calls it the court of a single judge applying fiqh.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Qawwali, Sacred Sound
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source The Qur'an
Qiyamah, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Muhammad at MedinaW. Montgomery Watt
Qunut, Prayers
Source Jami at-TirmidhiMuhammad al-Tirmidhi
Qurbani, Rituals
Source The Qur'an

The qutb is the summit of the classical hierarchy of saints, the single figure of the age believed to anchor the spiritual order of creation beneath ranked companies of lesser saints.

Rabbana Atina, Prayers
Source The Quran, Sacred Books of the East, volumes 6 and 9E. H. Palmer (translator)
Source The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological GuideJerome Murphy-O'Connor
Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Ruqyah, Practices
Source The Qur'an
Sabr, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Islamic art made geometry the principal ornament of the mosque, figural imagery being avoided in worship, producing interlaced star patterns and muqarnas whose construction from compass and straightedge is worked out to remarkable depth.

Source ElementsEuclid
Sadaqah, Practices
Source The Qur'an
Saffron, Plants

Devotional food custom (Ashura/Muharram nazri) and hadith-based dress restriction, not a doctrinal requirement.

Source Riyad as-Salihin, Chapter 365: The Prohibition of Wearing Saffron-Colored DressCompiled by Imam al-Nawawi; hadith from Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim
Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz
Source Sahih al-BukhariMuhammad al-Bukhari
Source Sahih al-BukhariMuhammad al-Bukhari
Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz
Source The Sufi Orders in IslamJ. Spencer Trimingham
Source The Qur'an
Sema, Sacred Dances
Source Mystical Dimensions of IslamAnnemarie Schimmel
Semah, Sacred Dances

A constituent service of the Alevi and Bektashi cem.

Sermon, Practices

The Islamic form is named khutbah rather than sermon and carries its own required standing within the Friday prayer.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)
Source The Sufi Orders in IslamJ. Spencer Trimingham
Shahada, Mantras
Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Source The Timurid Architecture of Iran and TuranLisa Golombek and Donald Wilber
Sharia, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Clergy or specialist role within Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Shirk, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Shukr, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Sahih MuslimMuslim ibn al-Hajjaj
Silat, Practices

Many lineages are explicitly Islamic, training adab and inner discipline and sometimes Sufi practice alongside technique; the honest description is plural by lineage.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Sirat, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The jihad was fought as an act of Islamic reform. Usman dan Fodio spent two decades teaching against Hausa rulers he judged to have mixed Islam with pre-Islamic custom and to govern unjustly, and the caliphate his forces founded was organized explicitly as an Islamic state under sharia. This marks the jihad's own religious cause and organization, not a claim that Islam as such directed every act of the campaigns that followed.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Derived from the tradition recorded on the mantra, Islam (Sufism).

Sufism, Denominations
Source The Sufi Orders in IslamJ. Spencer Trimingham

Sultan Walad led and wrote within Islam, in the Sufi current his father Rumi taught.

Source The Sufi Orders in IslamJ. Spencer Trimingham
Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Sunni, Denominations
Source The Quran, Sacred Books of the East, volumes 6 and 9E. H. Palmer (translator)
Surat al-Nas, Prayers
Source The Quran, Sacred Books of the East, volumes 6 and 9E. H. Palmer (translator)
Tafsir, Doctrines
Source Encyclopaedia of the Qur'anJane Dammen McAuliffe, general editor
Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Tahajjud, Practices
Source The Qur'an
Tahlil, Mantras
Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Tahmid, Mantras
Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz
Tajwid, Sacred Sound
Takbir, Mantras
Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Takfir, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Talbiyah, Prayers
Source Sahih al-BukhariMuhammad al-Bukhari
Talqin, Rituals
Taqwa, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Tarawih, Practices
Source The Qur'an
Tasbih, Mantras
Source Prayer in Islamic Thought and PracticeMarion Holmes Katz
Tashahhud, Prayers
Source Sahih al-BukhariMuhammad al-Bukhari
Tawaf, Practices
Source The Qur'an
Tawakkul, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Tawbah, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Tawhid, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Tayammum, Practices
Source The Qur'an
Ta'ziyeh, Rituals

Islamic shukr is treated as the proper response to every good thing received.

Source The Holy BibleAnonymous (multiple authors)

The rioting crowds in Hebron, Safed and elsewhere were overwhelmingly Muslim Arab, and the touching-off rumor concerned control of the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, but the Shaw Commission traced the violence to fear over sacred space and land rather than to Islamic doctrine as such; this edge connects that shared communal identity to the event without asserting it as Islam's own position.

The rioting crowds across Eastern Thrace's towns were overwhelmingly Turkish Muslim, but historians read the violence's proximate drivers as nationalist and economic, tied to the Resettlement Law's Turkification aims, rather than as arising from Islamic doctrine; this edge connects that shared communal identity to the violence without asserting it as Islam's own position.

Source Turkey, the Jews, and the HolocaustCorry Guttstadt

The mobs across Tripoli and the surrounding Tripolitanian towns were overwhelmingly Arab Muslim, but De Felice reads the violence's proximate drivers as rising Arab nationalist sentiment against British rule and Jewish statehood in Palestine rather than as arising from Islamic doctrine; this edge connects that shared communal identity to the violence without asserting it as Islam's own position.

Source Jews in an Arab Land: Libya, 1835 to 1970Renzo De Felice

The mobs mobilized on September 6 and 7 were overwhelmingly Turkish Muslim, organized through the ruling party and government-aligned unions, but Vryonis reads the pogrom's proximate cause as the Cyprus dispute and nationalist mobilization rather than Islamic doctrine; this edge connects that shared communal identity to the violence without asserting it as Islam's own position.

Meiktila's Muslim community was the riots' target, its homes, mosques and a madrassa burned and its members killed or displaced over the three days.

National Thowheeth Jamaath acted in the name of the Islamic State's jihadist ideology, a named extremist splinter group rather than mainstream Sri Lankan Muslim practice; this edge connects the attack to that claimed identity without asserting it as Islam's own position, and the retaliatory violence that followed fell on Sri Lanka's wider Muslim community, who had no connection to the bombings.

Source Final Report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry on the Easter Sunday AttacksPresidential Commission of Inquiry on the Easter Attacks, Government of Sri Lanka
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Source UNESCO World Heritage ListUnited Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

The Battle of Badr belongs to Islam, its own tradition field.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

The Battle of Uhud belongs to Islam, its own tradition field.

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and CommentarySeyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief)

Boko Haram fights under its own claimed jihadist reading of Islam, seeking a sharia-governed state; this connects the insurgency to that organizing identity, not a claim that mainstream Islamic teaching endorses it, and Nigeria's own mainstream Muslim scholars and organizations have consistently rejected the group's theology.

The Dajjal, Figures
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
The Farhud (1941), Wars & Conflicts

The rioting mobs and the police and army units who briefly joined them in Baghdad were overwhelmingly Muslim Iraqi, but historians treat the pogrom's proximate causes as substantially political, the collapse of the pro-Axis government and Nazi propaganda, rather than as arising from Islamic doctrine; this edge connects that shared communal identity to the violence without asserting it as Islam's own position.

Source Al-Farhud: The 1941 Pogrom in IraqEdited by Shmuel Moreh and Zvi Yehuda
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Its own text: "worn by Muslim men", favoured attire for Friday congregational prayer; the regional variation it names is variation within Islam.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)

Both belligerents fought as rival claims on legitimate authority and standing within Islam: the Azariqa and Najdat over who counted as a true believer and could rightly rule, the Umayyad Caliphate over its own claim to that same authority.

Seku Amadu framed the jihad as an act of Islamic reform against both an animist neighboring state and what he judged a compromised, syncretic Islam among the region's own Muslim populations, and the state he founded enforced sharia law directly and built an extensive network of Quranic schools.

Source A History of Islam in West AfricaJ. Spencer Trimingham
The Mahdi, Doctrines
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

A dramatization of the founding narrative of Islam from the first revelations through the early community's establishment in Medina, the film's entire subject.

Source The Message (1976 film) (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Source UNESCO World Heritage ListUnited Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Both belligerents fought as competing claims within Islam: the Nizari Ismaili state over the legitimate line of the Shia imamate after the 1094 Fatimid succession dispute, and the Sunni Seljuk Empire over its own religious and political authority against a movement it regarded as heretical.

Source Sahih MuslimMuslim ibn al-Hajjaj
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source The Sufi Orders in IslamJ. Spencer Trimingham
Source Sahih MuslimMuslim ibn al-Hajjaj
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, then the only legally recognized Islamist party in former Soviet Central Asia, formed the largest single component of the United Tajik Opposition coalition, but fought alongside secular and regionalist factions in a war whose deeper drivers were regional and clan rivalry rather than religious doctrine.

Source Tajikistan: A Political and Social HistoryKirill Nourzhanov and Christian Bleuer
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source The Amman MessageRoyal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought
Source Rumi: Past and Present, East and WestFranklin D. Lewis
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Umar, Figures
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Muhammad at MedinaW. Montgomery Watt
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Uthman, Figures
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The category and its vocabulary are Islamic, and the argument about it is internal to Islam.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Walima, Rituals
Source Sahih al-BukhariMuhammad al-Bukhari

Islamic scholars preserved and extended the art, adding the doctrines of lots, revolutions and horary judgement, and it was court practice for centuries; the jurists have generally condemned it as claiming knowledge of the unseen that belongs to God alone.

Source Horoscope SymbolsRobert Hand
Witr, Practices
Source The Qur'an

Its own record calls it a mosque built for and run by women.

Zakat, Practices
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source The Qur'an
Source The Qur'an
Source Encyclopaedia of Islam (Brill), 2nd and 3rd editionsP. Bearman et al. (eds.)

Opposed By

Son of God, Doctrines

Islam rejects the title in those words, which makes this a direct contradiction rather than a difference of emphasis.

Passages on This

Genesis 12:1-3, Passages

Abraham (Ibrahim) is honoured in Islam as the first muslim, one who submits.

Quran 55:1-9, Passages
Quran 96:1-5, Passages

Persecuted In

Source Irreligion in Albania (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

The mass killing of Jerusalem's Muslim population when the city fell to the crusaders on 15 July 1099, consistent with the death-toll figures already recorded for the fall of Jerusalem (Kedar's roughly 3,000 against the Arabic chronicle tradition's 70,000 outlier).

Source God's War: A New History of the CrusadesChristopher Tyerman

Position On

Repentance, Doctrines

Tawba: turning back, with the conditions of remorse, cessation and resolve, and restitution where a human right has been infringed.

Regions Where This Is Principal

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Arabia, Regions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Egypt, Regions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Mesopotamia, Regions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
North Africa, Regions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
The Levant, Regions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Related To

Barakah is understood throughout Islamic and Sufi tradition as God's own blessing.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

A dramatized biography of Muhammad's early life made from within the tradition, by an Iranian director, on the largest budget in Iranian film history, and the center of a real Sunni-Shia reception controversy over how (and whether) his life should be depicted on screen at all.

Source Wikipedia, "Muhammad: The Messenger of God (film)"Wikipedia contributors
PK (2014), Screen Works

A secondary plot follows an interfaith romance opposed on religious grounds, and PK samples Islamic ritual alongside Hindu, Sikh and Christian practice in his search for God.

Source Wikipedia, "PK (film)"Wikipedia contributors
Source The Message (1976 film) (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Zar, Practices
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

Sacred to This Deity

Baghdad, Cities

Baghdad was the seat of the Abbasid Caliphate, the central claimant to Sunni religious authority for five centuries.

Balkh, Cities

The dominant tradition of the city from the Arab conquest onward, distinct from the earlier, legendary Zoroastrian association.

Source A History of ZoroastrianismMary Boyce
Bukhara, Cities
Source Sufism: A Global HistoryNile Green
Constantinople, Cities

The city became an Ottoman Islamic capital after the 1453 conquest, and Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque.

Djenne, Cities
Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)
Fatehpur Sikri, Cities

The dargah of Salim Chishti in the courtyard of the congregational mosque is a working shrine.

Source Sufi Martyrs of Love: The Chishti Order in South Asia and BeyondCarl W. Ernst and Bruce B. Lawrence
Gao, Cities
Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)
Hebron, Cities
Source The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)Anonymous (multiple authors)
Holy Land, Regions

The land of the prophets and of the Farthest Mosque.

Jerusalem, Cities

Jerusalem's Haram al-Sharif is the traditional site of Muhammad's Night Journey and Ascension, Islam's third holiest site.

Source Jerusalem: The BiographySimon Sebag Montefiore
Kairouan, Cities

The Great Mosque of Kairouan is among the oldest surviving mosques in the world.

Kandahar, Cities

The Shrine of the Cloak is held to contain a cloak of the Prophet.

Kashmir, Regions

The Hazratbal shrine and the Rishi Sufi tradition belong to the valley.

Khiva, Cities
Source Sufism: A Global HistoryNile Green
Mazar-i-Sharif, Cities
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Nishapur, Cities

Nishapur was a centre of hadith scholarship and of Persian Sufi poetry.

Rajasthan, Regions

The Ajmer dargah of Moinuddin Chishti is among the most visited shrines in South Asia.

Timbuktu, Cities

Timbuktu was a center of Islamic learning at the southern edge of the Sahara.

West Bank, Regions

The Ibrahimi Mosque at Hebron and the Jerusalem sanctuary lie in the West Bank.

Spread Events

Anchors, more than a century and a half early, the general claim already on the map's own 1900 entry that Muslim presence in the Americas runs from enslaved West African Muslims brought before abolition, giving that claim a single documented name and date.

Returns to a region Islam reached under the Tang dynasty in 651, the map's own oldest entry in East Asia, now recording the most severe documented restriction on its practice there in the intervening thirteen centuries.

Source OHCHR Assessment of Human Rights Concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, ChinaUnited Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)

The founding episode of Islam's own spread history.

Source Muhammad at MedinaW. Montgomery Watt

Opens the map's own thread in southern Africa, distinct from the Swahili coast's eighth century arrival further north and the Sokoto Caliphate's nineteenth century spread further west, on a continent Islam had already reached from more than one direction.

Symbolized By

The star and crescent is widely used as an emblem of Islam and of Muslim-majority states.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)

Worship Of

Islam holds tawhid, the absolute oneness of God, and names as shirk the association of any partner with Him, which classical commentary reads as excluding the Trinity.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
John Bowker (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1997s.v. IslamView the Source
2. Islamic Creeds: A Selection
W. Montgomery Watt, Edinburgh University Press, 1994View the Source
3. Sahih al-Bukhari
Muhammad al-BukhariKitab al-Wasaya, the hadith of the seven destroyers (as-sab al-mubiqat)View the Source
4. The History of the Prohibition of Interest (The Review of Religions)
The Review of ReligionsArticle body, quoting Quran 30:40
Quote, Article body, quoting Quran 30:40
Whatever you lay out at interest that it may increase the wealth of the people, it does not increase in the sight of Allah.
View the Source
5. Polygyny in Islam (IslamQA.info, answer 14022)
IslamQA.infoAnswer 14022
Quote, Answer 14022
A man is permitted to marry one, two, three or four wives, in the sense that he may have this number of wives at one time.
View the Source
6. How Does Islamic Law Address Same-Sex Relations? (SeekersGuidance, 2024)
Shaykh Irshaad Sedick, SeekersGuidance, 2024the stated position on sexuality, classical school positions on same-sex actsView the Source
7. Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020
Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 20252010-2020 series
Quote, 2010-2020 series
Muslims 1.7 billion in 2010 to 2.0 billion in 2020, 24 to 26 per cent of the world population.
View the Source
8. Wikipedia, Mecca (source)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia
9. Quran, Surah At-Tawbah 9:60
Quran.comSurah At-Tawbah 9:60
Quote, Surah At-Tawbah 9:60
Alms-tax is only for the poor and the needy, for those employed to administer it, for those whose hearts are attracted to the faith, for freeing slaves, for those in debt, for Allah's cause, and for needy travellers. This is an obligation from Allah. And Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise.
View the Source
10. International Religious Freedom Report
United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom, US Department of State, 2023View the Source
11. Countries with the Most Muslims & Global Muslim Population Change, 2010-2020
Pew Research Center, 2025View the Source
12. The Future of the Global Muslim Population
Pew Research Center, 2011View the Source
The Art of Reciting the Quran: The Recited Book in the Life of Egypt
Kristina Nelson, University of Texas Press, 1985
The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places
F. E. Peters, Princeton University Press, 1994View the Source
The Qur'an
the central scripture of IslamView the Source
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. IslamView the Source
Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology
Frank Griffel, Oxford University Press, 2009View the Source
The Mourides of Senegal: The Political and Economic Organization of an Islamic Brotherhood
Donal B. Cruise O'Brien, Oxford, Clarendon Press (Oxford Studies in African Affairs), 1971View the Source
God's War: A New History of the Crusades
Christopher Tyerman, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006Associated With: Sixth Crusade
God's War: A New History of the Crusades
Christopher Tyerman, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006Associated With: Seventh Crusade
God's War: A New History of the Crusades
Christopher Tyerman, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006Associated With: Eighth Crusade
God's War: A New History of the Crusades
Christopher Tyerman, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006Associated With: Ninth Crusade
The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century
Hugh Kennedy, Routledge, 2016Objects and Practices of This Tradition: Second FitnaView the Source
The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century
Hugh Kennedy, Routledge, 2016Objects and Practices of This Tradition: Third FitnaView the Source
The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century
Hugh Kennedy, Routledge, 2016Objects and Practices of This Tradition: Fourth FitnaView the Source
The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In
Hugh Kennedy, Da Capo Press, 2007Objects and Practices of This Tradition: Muslim Conquest of the Levant
The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In
Hugh Kennedy, Da Capo Press, 2007Objects and Practices of This Tradition: Muslim Conquest of Persia
The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In
Hugh Kennedy, Da Capo Press, 2007Objects and Practices of This Tradition: Muslim Conquest of Egypt
The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In
Hugh Kennedy, Da Capo Press, 2007Objects and Practices of This Tradition: Muslim Conquest of North Africa
The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In
Hugh Kennedy, Da Capo Press, 2007Objects and Practices of This Tradition: Muslim Conquest of Iberia
Folio from an Unidentified Text, the Angel Israfil, accession S1986.219 (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art)
Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Arthur M. Sackler GalleryObjects and Practices of This Tradition: Folio from an Unidentified Text, the Angel Israfil (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, S1986.219), accession S1986.219View the Source
Riyad as-Salihin, Chapter 365: The Prohibition of Wearing Saffron-Colored Dress
Compiled by Imam al-Nawawi; hadith from Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih MuslimObjects and Practices of This Tradition: SaffronView the Source
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